Last year i found an article on 1UP.com with Masashiro Sakurai reflecting on super smash brothers. http://www.1up.com/news/masahiro-sakurai-reflects-super-smash
Im emailing you this in response to the Emailer stating that SSB4 would be the downfall of the series, while this article proves Super smash brothers brawl was the downfall and exactly why. Within the article we discover the process of how much work and heart he put into the series.
Sakurai states
“On a personal level, Melee had an extremely grueling development cycle. Some of my other games did, too, but Melee sticks out far ahead of the pack in my mind. I worked on that game for 13 months straight, after all, without a single Sunday or holiday off that whole time. During parts of it, I was living a really destructive lifestyle — I’d work for over 40 hours in a row, then go back home to sleep for four.”
Thats some real dedication right there!
He continues.
“I seriously felt like a man on a mission,” he said. “With the original [Nintendo 64] Smash Bros., there was no guarantee the game would be well-received at all — I had my hands full just trying to make it into the completely new sort of fighting game I had in mind. With Melee, though, the previous game did well enough that Nintendo and the character designers knew what I wanted in advance. And I wanted a lot. It was the biggest project I had ever led up to that point — the first game of mine on disc-based media, the first that used an orchestra for music, the first with ‘real’ polygon graphics. My staff was raring to go, and we plunged in full-tilt from the start. I pushed myself beyond any limit I could think of because I doubted I’d ever have this sheer amount of work in my hands ever again.”
He felt like ” a man on a mission” ! That statement right there just brings a smile to my face. Sakurai was Needing and wanting to make the best game possible and had the drive to work for it.
Moving on.
“Melee is the sharpest game in the series,” he wrote. “It’s pretty speedy all around and asks a lot of your coordination skills. Fans of the first Smash Bros. got into it quickly, and it just felt really good to play.”
Sakurai himself states that melee is the Better game here! Its better , faster , and had more skill to improve upon. There is a reason why Melee is the most popular in the series , he wanted it to be the best he could make!
But then we get to this next part.
However, he has one particularly deep regret: the game’s accessibility level. “I had created Smash Bros. to be my response to how hardcore-exclusive the fighting game genre had become over the years,” Sakurai said. “But why did I target it so squarely toward people well-versed in videogames, then? That’s why I tried to aim for more of a happy medium with Brawl’s play balance. There are three Smash Bros. games out now, but even if I ever had a chance at another one, I doubt we’ll ever see one that’s as geared toward hardcore gamers as Melee was. Melee fans who played deep into the game without any problems might have trouble understanding this, but Melee was just too difficult.”
This is where i start to get confused , lost and angry. He had created his dream fighting game and targeted it to fighting game fans. he Wanted to bring in more gamers with melee and Keep those that played the original and make them Happy! “But why did I target it so squarely toward people well-versed in videogames, then?” Back then he wanted to make a game for gamers! Why question that logic? That should be the thought process all along! “There are three Smash Bros. games out now, but even if I ever had a chance at another one, I doubt we’ll ever see one that’s as geared toward hardcore gamers as Melee was. Melee fans who played deep into the game without any problems might have trouble understanding this, but Melee was just too difficult” Now he believes the game that got so much praise , the game that stayed alive for nearly a decade , The game that was a must have for all Gamecubes…..was too difficult…and is basically alienating its core crowd. He decides to go completely against what his efforts were with melee and will most likely never make another one. All i can ask is why?
his answer is as follows…*sighs*…..
“If we want new people from this generation of gamers to come in,” he concluded, “then we need it accessible, simple, and playable by anyone. You can’t let yourself get preoccupied with nothing but gameplay and balance details. That’s where the core of the Smash Bros. concept lies, not on doggedly keeping the game the way it was before.”
Gameplay is the essence of Smash brothers…..no longer focusing on gameplay just makes the game a weaker installment of the series and makes fans of the series miss the better game. Of course adding in a stupid story that makes no sense also ruins the feel for smash brothers. He now believes easier is the way to go. The new generation is the important generation , Forget those that actually made SSB a success. The drive to make a game for gamers is lost now.
Case and point…The heart of smash brothers died after melee. I feel as though Sakurai has caught the Cancer of Miyamoto. having made the game he loves the best and to no longer make another one.
I hope this catches your eye Malstrom! and Thank you!
The first video game my (then) four year old nephew played was Smash Brothers Melee. The game was extremely accessible. What it seems he is actually complaining about was the ‘work’ it took to do that. The gameplay and balance, these are the fundamentals of the game. From my own experience with game making and observing others, it was clear that by focusing on the fundamentals made a game very fun. Adding in ‘new features’ like gimmicks didn’t drive interest like strong fundamentals did. Melee was the best selling game on the Gamecube. I was really impressed by it, and I bought Brawl because of it (I was not as impressed with Brawl).
I’m sad to say that it looks like you Smash Brothers fans are on the road to experiencing what Old School gamers have experienced with other game series. Each new Smash Brothers game will focus more on strange gimmicks and less and less on the fundamentals. Fundamentals are hard to develop, gimmicks are very easy. The identity of the ‘Old School’ gamer is a gamer who responds to these fundamentals. This is why you keep hearing the ‘Old School’ gamer keep downplaying the graphics, 3d, and other things that really don’t matter compared to the fundamentals of the game. Every video game that is really fun tends to have strong fundamentals. When you play such a game, it feels very addictive, and you do not want to stop.
I want these developers to get eight hours of sleep and have a normal family life. However, I do not think this and the drive and mission are mutually exclusive. The reason why Blizzard games perform so strongly and so consistently over time is because of a ‘easy to learn, hard to master’, meaning the game is accessible but has strong fundamentals. Something like ‘game balance’ is the most important thing at the company. It is why World of Warcraft succeeds and hasn’t been toppled by any other MMO. WoW relies on a strong fundamentals that took endless hours to balance and tweak. This is why the best selling MMO is from a RTS game company.
The drive and ‘mission’ he describes is exactly how the early game developers succeeded. They didn’t want to get a ‘real job’. And they did whatever it took so they could do what they loved. They were not a bunch of dreamy eyed artists wanting to express their ‘creativity’. They were fiercely searching for ways to make video games sell. If their games sold, they could keep making games.
My complaint is that this ‘drive’ seems absent today in most games. There is no more ‘fire in the belly’.
“How can you tell if a game has drive in it or not?” Can you imagine the game being made by EA? If the answer is yes, then the game has no drive in it. When I see something like NSMB Mii, it might as well be made by EA. Gamers can definitely tell when developers ‘phone it in’.
Wouldn’t you Smash Brothers fans prefer no Smash Brothers game than ones revolving around gimmicks? Wouldn’t it be cool that the absence of Smash Brothers to lead to a hunger and drive to create an even more awesome Smash Brothers game down the road? This is how I prefer it with the games I like. I’d prefer no Metroid: Other M and take the absence if it lead to a Super Metroid sequel further down the road.
I agree with what another emailer said about Nintendo putting themselves in a box according to this ‘cycle crap’. Since Nintendo systems can play games of last generation, this ‘cycle crap’ shouldn’t define Nintendo’s software output. I would rather wait for a quality video game than have every franchise make its appearance on the console featuring the ‘hardware gimmick’.